Golden Knights bolster stronghold in Nevada as kingdom expands

From the very beginning, the Vegas Golden Knights envisioned spreading their kingdom across the Rockies.

This offseason, that mission is again taking shape in the form of the VGK Tour engaging with fans outside the Las Vegas area. The tour will make stops in Jackson, Wyo.; Boise, Idaho; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Billings, Mont.; and Reno.

In addition to participating in on-ice clinics, fans will get the chance to meet players, broadcasters and other members of the organization.

“We put a lot of time and energy into engaging with these fans because they’re super important to us,” said Stephanie Rogers, the team’s vice president of marketing.

“We want them to feel like VGK really cares about them. We want to talk with them, see them and bring hockey to them,” Rogers said.

The team’s focus on those fans has been boosted by the Golden Knights’ newest streaming service, KnightTime+, which launched in September and allows fans outside of Las Vegas to watch games. The television exposure was one of the franchise’s founding principles, with owner Bill Foley delivering on his wish to secure game coverage not only in Southern Nevada but also in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah and parts of California and Arizona.

“We have over 10,000 subscribers just in the first year, and many of those people aren’t in Vegas,” Rogers said of the streaming service. “I think this just continues to be the next step in that journey of making everybody in the Mountain West Vegas Golden Knights fans.”

One place where the Golden Knights’ presence is lacking is in Utah. Upon the relocation of the Arizona Coyotes to Salt Lake City, becoming the Utah Hockey Club, the Golden Knights were booted from the market.

“We had a lot of fans and we have a lot of fans in Utah. Salt Lake City was a city where we saw a ton of people traveling in from and a ton of people engaging with us from,” Rogers said.

“Technically we’re not allowed to participate in that market anymore because now that’s Utah’s market,” she said. “We hope those fans don’t just forget about us, but there’s an understanding there.”

The Golden Knights, nonetheless, have made a major move in expanding deeper into Nevada and the Rockies.

In July, the team announced its affiliation with the Tahoe Knight Monsters, the ECHL’s newest expansion franchise located in Stateline.

The addition of the Knight Monsters makes Nevada the seventh state to have an NHL team, an AHL team — the Henderson Silver Knights — and an ECHL team. Nevada is the smallest state by population to do so.

“The area has a unique draw from not only Stateline but from the California border, Carson City and Reno,” Knight Monsters co-owner David Hodges said.

“There’s also a tremendous amount of unique visitors coming in each year to that area, so we felt like it was a really strong market opportunity to create a brand,” Hodges said.

It is the first time a hockey team has ventured into Northern Nevada since 1998, when the Reno Renegades played at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center in the now-defunct West Coast Hockey League.

The ECHL had always kept Reno on its short list for a potential expansion team, but it never had a suitable arena. The Knight Monsters, also partially owned by former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, will play at the Tahoe Blue Event Center, which is less than a year old.

The area has an established fanbase, despite being a seven-hour drive from Las Vegas.

“We’ve seen a lot of Vegas Golden Knights jerseys at a lot of our events, so we know their fans are everywhere,” Hodges said. “We certainly hope to help grow that brand and have some folks in Vegas that are fans of the Golden Knights become Knight Monster fans too.”

Hodges said he can’t wait to start playing. The team’s first game is set for Oct. 24 at home against the Jacksonville Icemen.

“We want to get on the ice and we want to make a statement in year one much like Vegas did when they hit the ground running,” Hodges said.

Adding another professional hockey team in Nevada aligns with the Golden Knights’ vision of growing a regional market.

While teams like the Buffalo Sabres and St. Louis Blues have their affiliates in Jacksonville, Fla., and Massachusetts, the Golden Knights have opted to keep their affiliates closer to home.

“If we bring people into the Knight Monsters fandom, they can get to Vegas a lot easier” than if the affiliate was far away, Rogers said.

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